Traditionally voice calls are made by a user placing their phone in an off-hook state, dialing a number manually or automatically using a pre-programmed number, waiting for the system to check the number, route the call and ring the distant end who will then place their phone in an off-hook state and begin speaking. An alternative is to use a dedicated line or resource between two users, sometimes called a private line, which is always connected. With private lines, connections are established before users need them. There is no dialing with a private line, so conversations can begin much faster. However, conventional private lines are not cost effective because telecom providers have to connect users who may not be in the same building state or country with a circuit that cannot be re-used for any other purpose. Additionally, conventional private line circuits often take weeks or months to provision and are expensive. These cost and provision restraints often result in users only being able to maintain a small number of conventional private connection circuits.
An alternate way to create dedicated peer to peer connections (FIG. 1) is over a private or public packet switched local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Packet switched private lines are more cost effective and faster to setup since they do not require dedicated lines and patching by telecom providers. Thus, more private lines can be created relatively quickly but they will still lock up system resources and available bandwidth as they must always be connected.
Users in some industries may have 500 or more contacts with whom they would like to have private line connections. However, a user can typically only afford to maintain a constant connection with a small percentage of those contacts. This is because, as stated above, each constant connection places a burden on overall system resources. However, a user typically only speaks with a small percentage of his/her contacts over a given period of time. During that same period of time the user may not speak to some contacts at all and at other times the connections remains idle and could be put to better use. Further, over time, it is not unusual for a particular private line to be used infrequently or not at all. This can result from the user of the private line leaving the firm and taking the counterparty relationship with them, or possibly the user's need was based on a short-term business opportunity/issue, or maybe the counterparty may have changed their location without anybody notifying the firm to order a circuit disconnect. In most cases firms do not actively monitor the activity of their private voice circuits, and users of private lines are not incentivized to notify managers of circuits that are no longer required. The effect is that telecom costs will creep higher over time as the inventory of private voice circuits are added and users continue to request additional connections and/or, in the case of packet switched connections, the available bandwidth of the firm and thus the efficiency of the non-dedicated communications will degrade over time.
It would be advantageous to provision dynamic connections which the user detects as persistent connections. It would also be advantageous to provision the most active connections as persistent connections and provision other connections as dynamic connections.